ESPN is not enough

The other day I was recalling a period in the 1980s when one of my regular daily acquaintances was a gentleman from Britain and an avid football (that's soccer for folks in the U.S.). It just so happened that I had recently read about the exploits -- both on and off the field -- of English cricket legend Ian Botham, er, make that Sir Ian Botham, and we discussed him. My chap didn't think much of Botham, apparently due to his off-field reputation at the time. I looked Botham up -- you can do that now with relative ease -- and while he's been mostly surpassed, he still holds a few cricket records, and his major events rank right up there with some of the best sport has to offer.

At least, if we understood it. I barely could figure out the basics of Botham's achievements from the Wikipedia article. ("After Botham took the first wicket, Willis skittled Australia out for just 111, finishing with figures of 8 for 43 - rated by Wisden as the 7th best bowling performance of all time".) That's great! What? There's even a YouTube video available of the following amazing achievement: "At 105-5, things looked a little worrying for them, but an Australian win was still the most likely result. Botham then took 5 wickets for 1 run in 28 balls to give England the win by 29 runs.".

This made me think about sports that have a professional presence elsewhere in the world, and a large number of fans, yet which rate barely a whiff of interest from a few dozens of people scattered around the U.S. (mostly immigrants who like these particular sports). This is not to disparage other sports; the U.S. is ethno-centric and sports-centric. This is just about sports that other places in the world are interested in, and which we barely ever see, except possibly for a few hours of coverage during the Olympics. Two of the sports aren't in the Olympics, the other ones are.

In no particular order:

1. Cricket
2. Rugby
3. Team Handball
4. Short-track speed skating (made famous by Apolo Anton Ohno, who may have gotten even more famous doing this in the United States -- trust me, if you haven't seen this and you're heterosexual, you'll like this, especially the moves at the 3:00 minute mark ):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i25nF5luJhY

Despite the stunning attractiveness of Julianne Hough's ... well, everything, except apparently a few endometers that had to get removed recently... Apolo makes his pro short-track speed skating money in South Korea and Japan, mainly.

5. Water polo (caveat: apparently there is professional water polo in Europe, but most teams lose money and only survive by being underwritten by wealthy individuals)
6. Short-track (velodrome) cycling
7. Badminton
8. Table tennis, aka ping-pong

It'd be refreshing to see more of these sports occasionally, instead of the steady diet of baseball, football, hockey, basketball, and a dash of soccer, er, football we get in the U.S. Maybe I just need a satellite dish and a lot more spare time.

Oh yeah, I still have to explain why I hate ESPN.